7 Tips + 21 Video Apps to Elevate Your Mobile Marketing Game

Successful digital marketing campaigns have long since used video for blogs, live stream and to capture interviews, tutorials, presentations, product demos, reviews, testimonials and ads. 95% of video marketers plan to increase or maintain video spend in 2020 (according to Wyzowl)

Although it’s always best to have professionals capture your video, it’s not always possible, so marketers must master the art of capturing video with their phones. To that end, I asked Paula Kennedy of Purple Door Creative (www.purple-door.ca) to share her best tips and tricks on how we can elevate our mobile video game.

7 Tips to Elevate Your Mobile Marketing Game

Get your phone out of your hands.

Think about angles.

If outside, be aware of the wind. You don’t hear it, but your phone will! Consider using lav mic, dead cat you buy online or making yourself.

If you’re moving, be aware of how you walk. Try Ninja walking.

Slow down when walking or panning or you will make your viewer ill.

Speak clearly, towards the phone and enunciate your words.

Use native video recorder or step up to an app that gives you greater control over your settings. One I use is Filmic Pro which gives me near DSLR control over my iPhone. There are plenty of others. It’s a matter of choice and budget.

21 Video Editing Apps

There are plenty of video apps you can use. It’s a matter of choice and budget.

InShot App — Would be a step between free & paid. There is a small fee to remove the watermark from your videos but it does offer many editing options including the ability to change the speed of your footage and add text.

Video Transcript

Sue Sutcliffe 0:06I’m Sue Sutcliffe from Dominate The Digital, and I’m here today with Paula Kennedy of Purple Door Creative who is going to be sharing with us some of the best tips for elevating your mobile video game and I’m really excited.

Paula is a creative genius with a unique eye for graphic design, video and photography. She launched her own company — Purple Door Creative in 2016 and she’s taking Durham Region by storm. She offers creative visual marketing solutions for businesses and real real estate agents in Durham Region and the surrounding areas. From quality photography and videography, to graphic design and more. Her goal is to make clients and their products or services outshine their competition, and she does so with a personal touch and attention to every detail.

Paula, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m super excited about that. How you doing?

Paula Kennedy 1:01I am fantastic. I’m so excited to be with you here, Sue for the first episode of what I’m sure it’s going to be a great series for you. You know

Sue Sutcliffe 1:09what, I just love the geek stuff and I really appreciate you taking the time with me. And I’m super stoked about hearing about the latest and greatest in tools for video. I mean, we all need video nowadays, every Canadian marketer, every marketer needs to be shooting video and as much as professional photography and video is something that everybody should have. We also have to be empowered to do it with our phones. So So what are your tips for that? What are the what’s the best, the latest and greatest in that stuff?

Paula Kennedy 1:40I’m one of those people that I would be in a lot of trouble if I were able to max out a credit card because I would do it in one of those stores where you can buy gadgets and gizmos for photography. I am a tech geek, totally 100% to the core. So when we talk about things for photography, and how to elevate your mobile video game. We’re not talking about Candy Crush here, we’re talking about taking the videos that you’re going to create with your mobile device to the next level. And how you’re going to do that is by getting the phone out of your hands. everybody’s hands inherently shake. Nobody has rock-steady nerves no matter what they tell you. And when you’re holding something in your hands and you’re trying to keep it stable or steady, or however you hold it, whatever you do, you need help with that. And the very first thing that I’m going to suggest everybody invest in, they are super cheap and will just completely change your game right from the get go. is one of these I hope you can see that. That is called a pop socket.

Sue Sutcliffe 2:40Oh, that was a name for them.

Paula Kennedy 2:43Yeah, that’s called a pop socket. You can even get them branded. I know several people who put their marketing information on these. You can buy them pretty much anywhere. This one I believe came from chapters indigo, and it sits flush on the back of your phone most of the time so it’s not interfering with that You know your phone in and out of your pocket or your purse or whatever. But as soon as you want to start taking video, what it does is it gives you the ability to stabilise your phone. So your phone is not directly in your hand. Now, you’re hanging on to the socket, right? Remember I said get it out of your hand? Ah, okay, so that’s step one. The first thing that’s the very first thing and that allows you to hold your phone in any orientation, regardless of what you want to film, and to keep it stable. That’s the first that’s that’s the first techie gadget, I would suggest everybody gets one of these little things. It’s a pop socket,

Sue Sutcliffe 3:33and they cost…

Paula Kennedy 3:35a couple 20 bucks 2010 1020 bucks, something like that. They’re they’re not a huge investment. Awesome. Yeah. The second thing that you can get is one of these and it’s just a little stand. There five bucks on Amazon. And what it does is it allows you to put your phone onto a tripod. So that’s when you get into something like this, which is gorilla pod and this just snaps into the top. Your phone fits in here and expands to all different sizes of phones. Okay, so your phone sits in there. Now you have a tripod for it. Okay, so you can set it up and you can actually get away from your phone and talk to it.

Paula Kennedy 4:22to selfie stick. Oh, it’s a selfie stick. It’s a selfie stick. So again, gets it out of your hands, gets it away from you, gives you space allows you to film what’s happening around you. Instead of having your phone here you can only hold it about two feet away with your arm. One of these allows you to get it that much further away and you see more of your environment.

Sue Sutcliffe 4:43And you can go from a better, more flattering angle.

Paula Kennedy 4:46That’s right. flattering angles up high. Look down, get rid of this hide your chins, right. Love it. The next level up from those and this is something that you and I’ve talked about before. It’s called the new

Unknown Speaker 5:01gimbal

Paula Kennedy 5:02Yes. Now gimbal there, there are different varieties of gimbals you can get motorised and non motorised. For myself, I prefer motorised ones. And I do have an example of one right here. This is called an Osmo. And it’s by a company called DJI. And you can see that I have a phone in it now, and it’s holding it stable for me. And the beauty of this one is it allows you with a quick little tap of a button to switch from portrait orientation to horizontal oriented orientation. So if you’re filming for Instagram or Facebook stories, you want to be filming this way. Right. So this one is perfect for that. This is the mobile three and it retails for around 150. Canadians so not super expensive, has a lot of other options on it. There’s a lot of neat little things, but the key thing is here, and hopefully you can see this is it’s keeping the phone stable. So the phone’s not shaking. I move my hand and the phone stays level.

Sue Sutcliffe 6:01So you don’t get that bumpity bump. That’s,

Paula Kennedy 6:03that’s right. That’s right. And it makes the viewing experience for your viewers a lot more pleasant.

Sue Sutcliffe 6:11For sure. Yeah, I could see that totally. And and so a little gimbal goes for about 100

Paula Kennedy 6:17or depending on the the brand. Yes, you can. You can get cheaper models for around $100. This one that I’ve shown you is around 150 and they do go up from there. You can get into the thousands but then you’re getting into Gamble’s that are meant more for DSLRs and phones.

Sue Sutcliffe 6:35Yeah, you know, I was at a conference recently and there was a guy doing video and I noticed it I didn’t know what it was but I’m guessing that was a really high end. Kimball

Paula Kennedy 6:47have a couple of those as well. They’re not not here in my display, but I do have a couple of those as well that I use for for filming depends on the application but for the purposes of today’s conversation. These are the kind gimbals that you’re going to be looking at and there’s there’s other companies there’s Cyclone. There’s smooth is another one that’s a little lower end and well rated mtj I as I mentioned, wonderful

Sue Sutcliffe 7:11so tell me something I mean I know you’re a geek I know you love all these toys and you have all that all that stuff. Where do you Where’s your go to place like where do you go to buy this stuff? I mean, like we’re where would an amateur that doesn’t know much like Do you have any is there is there tech stores is or tech stores that we can go to to tap into stuff for it. Or do you buy manufacturer

Paula Kennedy 7:32um, it depends on what I’m after. When it comes to camera equipment my go to is Henry’s Okay, when it comes to accessories, sometimes Best Buy most of the time Amazon and what I’ll do is I do the online reviews, I do a lot of research. And then I will go to Amazon and I’ll order it and buy it from there. Well that’s typically where a lot of my things come from. You can buy directly through the Manufacturers as well. DJI has a very good web store you can buy directly from them, but most of their stuff is available on Amazon and the pricing you’ll find is that park

Sue Sutcliffe 8:09Awesome. Awesome. And what about software and software for for dealing with video like we grabbed video and you know, we were supposed to tell our story you know on social media so we so we grabbed video and and now we’re going to do a better because we have these these awesome tools to play with. Is there any apps that you would recommend or software that you know the mobile videographer can use to come up with half decent video footage?

Paula Kennedy 8:40Yeah, absolutely. Now, everybody’s phones comes with a native video recorder and the native camera. I can only speak to iPhone. That’s all I’m familiar with. I did use blackberry many years ago but I’ve been with iPhone now for quite a few. So that’s what I’m familiar with. So they’re their native video recording. is quite good, it doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility and control. So if you do want to step that up, you can look into applications like film work. Now what it does is it gives you almost DSLR like control over your phone, you can control your aperture, your F stop your exposure, you know, you can create some neat effects with that. Where I find it really shines is when you need to shoot a scene where you’re switching from bright sunny to shadow. And you can actually control the exposure so that one or the other isn’t completely lost either. All your highlights are blown out and your shadows are too dark. So you have the option to to create the dynamic or to control the dynamic range a little bit more when you’re using an app like that. Wow, okay,

Sue Sutcliffe 9:45okay. So and you do you do a lot of video editing on your phone, or do you prefer to do it on desktop?

Paula Kennedy 9:52Personally, I prefer to do it on desktop because I’m typically doing more in depth editing than than what most people would be doing. However, there are a lot of really good apps that you can get for your phone, particularly if you’re producing video for social media. So if you want to do some of the special effects that you see like on your Tech Talk videos, things like that. So there are all kinds of apps for that. You can just google them and go to the app store, and you can search for video editing, and you’re going to get a list back of them, I would just recommend read the reviews. Read what’s available, there’s a lot of difference between free versus paid a lot of times you’ll be able to get a free app. And what happens is they’ll watermark it so it will have the company information on it. Like the company who produced the app, their information will show up on your final video, which if you’re using this in a professional capacity, that’s not good. So you’re going to want to either have to buy a subscription to the app or purchase the app to remove that watermark. So bear that in mind. It’s one thing to try it out and see if you like it. A lot of them will give you a trial version. But if you do have to pay for it make sure it’s either a one time payment or just watch if it’s a monthly subscription because they’re going to ding you every month that fee to use that app whether you using it or not, you’re going to pay for it.

Sue Sutcliffe 11:10Yeah, yeah. And I guess they could really I mean, if they want to, I mean, the key is they’ve got to grab the video they’ve got to grab good footage but if they work with somebody like that’s a professional like yourself, I mean I could be out on the road grabbing the stuff and and actually shoot it to you and then you could do the full nine yards with it to touch it up and you know, check the exposure and all that other stuff but yeah, for sure we can look at the the the the the upside, I’ve been reviewing some of them myself and I’ve got a bunch of them selected that trip to turn to try out but I am always close to a computer so I’m not as app savvy with the video stuff as as some people might be.

Paula Kennedy 11:55So in the in that circumstance to where you’re talking about where you might be shooting the video and sending it off to an editor. So you, you would have to bear in mind then when you’re capturing the video how it’s going to be used what your end result or end purposes for it. If you’re going to be shooting the video specifically for Instagram stories or specifically for Facebook stories, remember I showed you where that gimbal where it shoots either portrait or horizontal. panoramic, you want to make sure that you’re filming in the in the the orientation that you’re going to require at the end. Because if you’re filming horizontally, and it’s going to end up on Instagram stories, you’re losing a lot of information on the left and right of your frame. Yeah, yeah. Bear that in mind.

Sue Sutcliffe 12:41I wonder I have a theory about the world going square. You know,

Paula Kennedy 12:46I would think that it would be it would make our job so much easier, so much easier if everything went square.

Sue Sutcliffe 12:53Yeah, you know, I started in digital, in social media at the beginning and taking photos and all that and there was This orientation and that orientation and I really have invested large into square. Because of just from a design aspect, you can’t go wrong with a square, it just makes it so much easier. But like you say, with social media, it makes all the difference. You need to shoot for the environment you’re going into. And so that’s, that’s really key for sure. Any other tips for us, Paula, on on video on the move?

Paula Kennedy 13:27Yeah, um, there’s a couple of different things we didn’t touch on. So when you’re out filming, we talked about getting a gimbal. So you’ve got your gimbal in your hand and you’re up to capturing your footage. Be aware of how you walk. So as you walk, people naturally have a bit of an up and down to their gate. And you’ll see that reflected in the footage. Now the gimbal will minimize that. But we have something called a ninja walk that we do. And then what it is is you have ninja walks so what it is, is you walk heel to toe with each foot and you kind of it’s a rolling gate so your heel comes down As you’re coming off the toe of the previous foot, so it’s a very, very smooth rolling gate. It takes a lot of practice. It is easier to do in socks even in shoes, but it can be done. The other thing is, like I said, when you’re panning or when you’re moving, just slow things down. If you’re if you’re switching left to right, if you’re panning back and forth and you’re doing this with pan your viewers are going to be having you know, they’re gonna have to have an airsick bag beside them while they’re watching your video and you don’t want that. So just make sure everything is smooth, nice and slow. And just be aware of your background, your angles, your lighting. We spoke about this video light here I’ve got one on my desk Now keeping me nicely illuminated because it’s gotten a little bit darker outside we’ve lost her natural light. And if you’re filming outside, something you may not be aware of this the wind. Ah, so you’re not going to hear it. our ears naturally filter the wind so you don’t actually hear it but your phone is going to pick And it just sounds like stack. So there’s a couple of different ways you can work around that if if you want to go to the high end, there’s something like this it’s called a shotgun mic and it can mount to your phone and and plug into it and it has this wind filter on it. It’s called a dead cat about things they call this a dead cat.

Sue Sutcliffe 15:18Dead cat?

Paula Kennedy 15:20And what it does is it just filters the wind so you get the sound but not the, of the wind, right. The other option that you have, and I’m sure your fans this, you see it quite often when you see people being interviewed, this is a lav mic, and it’s the one that just clicks on your colour so when you’re speaking it’s very close to your mouth picks up the the audio very well. And it runs from a cord to your phone as well. And they also have their little version of a dead cats just a little fuzzy cover that goes over the mic. Okay. And the last thing is if you’re a bit of a do it yourselfer, you can go on YouTube and you can learn how to make a wind filter for your phone out of a sock

Sue Sutcliffe 15:58Out of a sock. A sock. Well, there you go, you gotta like that. I think I might have a version of a dead cat here, which I didn’t even know what it was. But I bought a Blue Yeti and on it and I thought, I’m not sure if I’m gonna like this podcasting thing. So I’m going to buy this blue Yeti and I bought it off someone off second hand, and they said, Oh, I got this and I got this. And I haven’t even tried it all out. But then they gave me this thing here. So is this like the equivalent of a dead cat?

Paula Kennedy 16:30Kind of what that does is, when you’re speaking, obviously, you’re expelling air as you speak. So when you’re talking, you can sometimes hear that on the mic. It just becomes like a noise when you’re speaking the microphone. So what that does is that stops that from actually hitting the mic so it allows the sound from your voice to go through but it stops the air.

Sue Sutcliffe 16:51We talked through here like this.

Paula Kennedy 16:52Yes, that goes between your mouse and the mic.

Sue Sutcliffe 16:55Okay. Now I know I’m learning everything about

Sue Sutcliffe 17:00Well, you’ve given us some really wonderful tips, Paula. And, you know, as as usual, it’s always a pleasure chatting with you. How would you you know, people on this call, I mean, I’ve worked with you for years and I highly recommend your services like not only for the quality of the work that you do, but also for your professionalism and your I’m going to say top drawer customer service because I don’t find that always in the creative industries. So have a people that are listening in, find out more about Paul Academy and what you do?

Paula Kennedy 17:35Well, I am on your typical social media media channels, you can find me on Facebook at purple door creative. Instagram is the same website is purple dash, door.ca, LinkedIn, that sort of thing. And I’m guessing maybe in the description of this video, we can post links for everybody. And we can also provide a list of some of the apps that we’ve discussed today for

Sue Sutcliffe 17:58them to that’ll be That’d be awesome. I will get this transcribed. So we can put that down and we’ll we’ll insert the link. So that’s a great idea. Paul, thank you so much for spending time with us today, you are awesome. The tips you gave were phenomenal. And if you’re listening there, you know, grab some of these tips and action them because you know what, it’s all about media today. And you know, as much as it’s really great to work with a professional and and we want to do that all the time on the fly. You have to be able to capture the stuff, they can’t do it without you. They can’t create magic. So you have to be prepared to create this, this these videos, these, this photographer you have to be able to give your your media person something to work with when you’re on the road. So Paula, when people come on the show, I always like to ask them three questions. So the question I’d like to ask you is when did you first get on the internet?

Paula Kennedy 18:59When did it First get on the internet. Well, I know I’ve had my yahoo email address since 1996. That’s pretty No, it’s it’s been a week or two.

Sue Sutcliffe 19:11And a social media space that you could not live without.

Paula Kennedy 19:15For me that is hands down easy, and it is Facebook. Ironically, I resisted joining Facebook for a long time. My friends were on it. I had family members on it. And I said, Nope, I’m not going to do it not going to do it for years. And I finally caved in 2007 is when I joined Facebook. And it has become a very good revenue stream. For me. It’s where I connect with a lot of my clients. It’s where I showcase my work. And it is also where I keep in touch with family members who are spread out across the globe that I can’t see very often.

Know of any video apps that should be added?

Please add them to the comments below.

Author: Paula Kennedy

Paula is a creative genius with a unique eye for graphic design, video, and photography. She launched her own company, Purple Door Creative in 2016, offering creative visual marketing solutions for businesses and realtors in Durham Region and surrounding areas. From quality photography and videography to graphic design and more, her goal is to make her clients and their products or services outshine their competition and she does it with a personable touch and attention to every detail.
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